


The Family Jewel

by psychosomatic86



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Betrayal, Characters to be added as fic progresses, Deceit, F/F, Murder, Pink Diamond Origin Story, Revolution, Violence, the gem war, various oc gems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-12 05:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7922971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychosomatic86/pseuds/psychosomatic86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, she felt only an encompassing darkness and a vague sense of awareness, a wisp of white in the permeating embrace of something entirely inexplicable and promising of so much existence.</p><p>In the beginning, she felt only this, for her beginning was darkness, but her end…</p><p>In the end, she sang with light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue Part 1: The Makings of a Matriarch

In the beginning, she felt only an encompassing darkness and a vague sense of awareness, a wisp of white in the permeating embrace of something entirely inexplicable and promising of so much existence.

In the beginning, she felt only this, but as time passed, she began to grow and feel much, much more, _understand_ much, much more, these increments of comprehension collocating with the careful but purposeful voyage of time.

This was what she first discovered, actually, time and its inevitable passage, time and a sudden realization she knew the precise amount that had elapsed since before she had attained the privilege of knowledge. Precisely, ninety six thousand four hundred and one years, eight months, twenty two days, sixteen hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty three seconds. She was similarly baffled to find she knew what years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds were and how so many of them was barely time at all for a being like herself.

She didn’t know why it seemed so short, but between the yawning stretch of ninety six thousand four hundred and one years, eight months, twenty two days, sixteen hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty three seconds and seven hundred million years _precisely_ , she gradually became accustomed to the slow drip of consciousness that pooled like a warm oasis, as if the information was planted within her and steadily breaking loose to present itself piece by piece as she matured.

First came her revelation of time and its ceaseless journey, from there proceeded an increasingly more defined perception that allowed her to stretch metaphysical fingers into the darkness and sift through deposits of rich nourishment, pull it close, assimilate it with a sigh that resonated for decades. Around her, the darkness crushed ever inward, solidifying everything into a neat, compacted physicality, and there she stayed, nursed in the womb of a planet that would eventually be her undoing but, for now, cradled her like the most precious of possessions.

And she was.

In the beginning.

Because beginnings are new, are pure and potent with possibility, rife with the expectation of perfection, carved so precisely that the intended result could never deviate from its destiny, a destiny buried for millions of years until it could be contained no longer and burst from a turbid, boiling crust, royalty rising resplendent from its scarlet swells, the final beacon of a new era towering and glowing like a star, the universe singing her name in resonant ardor.

Because beginnings have everything, an entirety in which to decide and discard according to the anticipated future. And this particular future, chosen for this particular beginning like the three beginnings before it, was, as all beginnings are, _perfect_.

Perfect in placement and poise and appearance, just like her sisters.

Just like a Diamond.

Because beginnings are perfect.

But endings...

Endings, so capricious and cruel, must be heeded with vigilant caution. Endings devastating in their repercussions, with consequences that cannot be remedied, that can render a blossoming beginning obsolete just to spite the claim the past cannot be changed…

And in the end, the youngest of four, great matriarchs, a gem of earth in every implication…

In the end, Pink Diamond shattered her beginning, and all that remained were pieces from which nothing could be salvaged.

In the end, there were pieces from which nothing could be saved, but that did not mean there was nothing thereafter. For her beginning was darkness, but her end…

In the end, she sang with light.


	2. Prologue Part 2: Song Part 1

_“-if you had just listened-”_

_“-took the necessary precautions-”_

_“-a waste of resources! We don't even need-”_

_“Silence!”_

 

 

  
_Silence_.

 

 

 

 

 

Silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For seven hundred million years.

A ceaseless silence.

Silence that rendered even her thoughts voiceless.

Silence, first.

_s_

 

 

_i_

 

 

_l_

 

 

_e_

 

 

_n_

 

 

_c_

 

 

_e_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
_Suddenlyagreatgrindingcacophonytheshriekofplatetectonicsrent i n g a p a r t in har_ mony with the bellowing gurgle of freshly bled magma surging to life, its colors too new for her young vision, so bright that she cried out a blinding agony and tore from her crystalline contours an intangible, alabaster splendor as the darkness split and wrestled against her light.

She _howled_ in protest.

_TOOMUCH_

She never knew.

_ITHURTS_

She _always_ knew.

_WHATIS_ -

From the beginning, this beginning, her beginning, she had always known what to expect.

_PLEASE_

But not now.

_HELP_

It was not yet her time.

She knew this.

_SISTERHELPME_

 

  
_Sister_ ….

 

 

 

 

 

  
“ _Come to me._ ”

A new sound.

“ _Follow me, sister_.”

A new presence.

“ _Listen closely._ "

A song


	3. Chapter 1: A Diamond From the Rough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey, so here’s where the story actually picks up. Sorry for the lack of notes in the prior two chapters, I was doing that to maintain the #Cryptic Aesthetic™ of the prologue. Also, heads up, this is my first su fanfic, so please excuse an ooc-ness or general ignorance of certain nuances. I’ll pick it up quickly, though. Hope you enjoy this all the same! And do please let me know if you like this, I love feedback.

When Pink Diamond later reminisced on the circumstances surrounding her emergence, she could always recall with stark clarity the sights and sensations of her first formation, the turbulent surge of a crimson mantle sizzling as it tried in vain to claim her gem, the groan of sediment as it protested against her body, its efforts all for naught when, with a great flash of light, she took her form and broke free from her diamond.

Every second of aching, searing pain as she struggled to the surface, the piercing feeling of complete _wrongness_ when she did only to have it abruptly usurped by a less virulent understanding of naivety and exposure…

She could remember this.

But she would forfeit every memory she had if only to know what had brought her to being, what sound, what _song_ , a hymn whose notes and harmonies were lost the moment they metamorphosed into speech.

Later, she would lament the inadequacy of her mind.

Now, she could only accept it, follow the song up, up, _up_ , clawing through the entrails of her planet as gingerly as the haunting notes urging her ever faster allowed her to.

 _I’m coming_ , she thought.

The song pitched and fell, like breath, like her’s, raw lungs sucking in the soil, then, at last, as the song reached a crescendo, cool, clean air.

She _wailed_ -

“Sister.”

-collapsed, hands plunging into the surrounding ocean, its secretive depths accommodatingly shallow save for the bottomless crater she was crawling from, but these details didn't present as priority. The crushing weight of miles upon miles of rock lifting from her shoulders to allow another to settle, one entirely invisible and vastly more devastating struck far more profoundly, and she _tried_ to focus...

She tried so _desperately_.

"Sister."

In the end, it wasn't enough, and she turned eyes that had, as of yet, perceived only darkness to the voice that had, as of yet, been singing.

"Sister, rise."

Now, it spoke.

"Take my hand."

And everything was _white_ , as though the figure, its proffered hand looming for miles, existed only to purge her memories of earth’s lightless incubation.

She did not hesitate, clasped fingers five times the size of her own, felt remarkably weightless as she was stood on feet unremarkably sure.

For they were always meant to be this way.

Expected.

 _Designed_.

But she was not weightless, nor was her stance unremarkable.

To her, at least.

At least, to her, these were indications of the ever consuming wrong that whispered somewhere she could not fully hear.

Understand.

 _Heed_.

“Welcome, sister.”

She could understand this.

“We have waited so long.”


End file.
